Pete Seeger and the American Soul

Pete Seeger performs at his 90th birthday celebration, which doubled as an all-star benefit for his environmental non-profit, the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. (Reuters)

The singer-songwriter-folk hero Pete Seeger, who died Monday at the age of 94, always reminded me of Henry Fonda playing Tom Joad in John Steinbeck's immortal Grapes of Wrath. Not just Fonda's character, although surely there were resemblances, but in particular this scene and these lines from the great work:

This is precisely what Pete Seeger did with his entire extraordinary life. He wasn't just the Forrest Gump of his time. He wasn't just ubiquitous on the national scene by happenstance. He was purposely so—from the late 1930s until a few weeks ago he actively sought out the suffering he saw and tried to ease it. He did this for three quarters of a century.

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You can say that you didn't like his music or complain that his embrace of Communism did not end soon enough (or did not end at all). You can say that that he should not have gone to Vietnam in 1972 or that he should have been more critical of Castro's Cuba. There are plenty of political criticisms you could make about the man, his life, and his legacy.

But what made his life remarkable weren't his political beliefs—right or wrong there are plenty of people with such beliefs. It was the countless selfless acts he took in honor of those beliefs. Here was a man who dedicated the entirety of his long life to profound social issues, a man unafraid to take controversial positions on the biggest issues of his age even when those positions were not popular or expedient. "I believe that there are things worth saying," he would say and, of course, he was right.

So Pete Seeger was there in the 1950s singing about the perils of McCarthyism. When he was (naturally) brought in for questioning by the House Committee on Un-American Activities he did not plead the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions. Instead, courageously, he denounced the Committee's efforts to question him about his political and religious beliefs. For this he was convicted and blacklisted from television and radio.

His critics often called Pete Seeger anti-American. I think the opposite was true.

His critics often called Pete Seeger anti-American. I think the opposite was true. I think he loved America so much that he was particularly offended and disappointed when it strayed, as it so often has, from the noble ideals upon which it was founded. I don't think that feeling, or the protests it engendered, were anti-American. I think they were wholly, unabashedly American.

In that passage from "Grapes of Wrath," Steinbeck wrote (and Fonda spoke) these words: "A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody." I think that's what Pete Seeger was. He was the little piece of the big American soul. And for 75 years he spoke on behalf of the souls of tens of millions of Americans who were too scared, or too busy, or too tired to speak out against the injustices they saw.